The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally. All meals are independently paid for - the author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
There’s a guy who keeps eating banh mi at work, and every time he does it I am triggered to get some the following day. I ended up visiting Nam Fong Hot Bread twice over the course of the week, each time a 10 minute detour on the way to work, because the first time I went I got a sliced pork roll and a roast pork roll, cut them into halves to share with my friend, only for her to eat the entire roast pork roll. I thought the intention was obvious!
Excuse the sogginess after a 45 minute drive and a 4-hour sit in the fridge, but this banh mi thit pork roll ($6.50) was on point. The meat packing was packed, the serving of pate and Vietnamese mayo was generous, and the pickled vegetables were fresh and tasty. I literally have no notes about this banh mi, and it approaches the Platonic ideal of what a banh mi should be. Even the price was unreal.
The roll that I bought twice but got to eat once, banh mi heo quay roast pork roll ($8.50) was again excellent as well as excellently priced. This roll featured a huge amount of meat, separate crispy pork skin which appeared to be made in house, and was easily something you would pay upwards of $10 for elsewhere. The flavours were good, the pate and mayo and roast pork in combination was very creamy, and this was just a good roll overall.
Both rolls even had the pickled daikon that seems to only make a showing in Bankstown and Cabramatta hot bread shops.
Can recommend, and didn’t let me down over the Australia Day long weekend when 5 other hot bread shops, which showed ‘open’ status on Google Maps, did.
Nam Fong Hot BreadBankstown 54 Bankstown City Plaza, Bankstown NSW 2200
Not a restaurant, but a catering service that I had the pleasure of eating food from at a recent course.
Being so sick and tired of the same sandwiches, rolls, and occasional pizza served at educational events by the local hegemon, it was nice to see something that deviated away from the standard fare. We had Vietnamese food options both days, though I only managed to capture images of this delicious shaking beef with tomato rice, and a fairly good soft shell crab bao.
It was really just like eating a meal that I would want to eat at a restaurant, rather than having to subsist on something (ham and cheese and salad rolls) that I’d never order for myself.
Though I didn’t pay directly for the meal, it was included in the price of the course. They’ve really set a high standard for catering and I’d not bne sad if future educational events and conferences that I happen to be at could hire them as well.
We’ve been meaning to go to Jacob’s Vietnamese place in Ashfield for quite a few months now, but have failed each time due to their odd opening hours. Though they open 7 days a week, they both open a bit late for breakfast, and close a bit too early for dinner. It’s a good thing that when they do open in the morning, however, they offer a full on all-day Vietnamese menu.
We had the phở đặc biệt (the special beef rice noodle soup) for $19, which is quite a reasonable price for the size of the meal. There was a good helping of rare beef, tendon, beef balls, and tripe. The tripe and tendon in particular being not something that you see in a lot of pho restaurants these days – including sadly Pho Vien down the road.
The taste of the pho was quite good. It had quite a traditional and flavourful broth, and came with a lot of green onion as well as a very healthy portion of bean sprouts, which I love. Unfortunately I did find I did find (and my partner found this too) a bit of an unusual and unpleasant taste with the tendon. Even though I normally love tendon, and the texture of the tendon was perfect, the flavour of it was kind of weird. I don’t know why this has happened, if it’s a one-off thing or if it’s a recurrent thing to do with where they sourced it from. But I really didn’t love it.
The other thing that we had on our first visit was the cơm tấm đặc biệt,($19), the broken rice deluxe with the grilled pork chop, shredded pork skin, steamed pork cake and fried egg. This is really a dish that was more than the sum of its parts, many of which were fine in insolation but great in combination.
For starters, we did not love the pork skin, even though I’m sure it was perfectly adequate according to the standards by which pork skin prepared in this manner are usually judged. The egg was fried and fully cooked which is I guess fine, and perhaps it’s only our westernized taste buds that prefer a partially cooked egg. The pork loaf and the pork chop were delicious, with no negative points to say about them, and of course the fish sauce really helped to bring everything together, moisten the rice and make it all great.
First visit thoughts – Overall, the meal was only $38, and really got two adults very full at 10am in the morning, and for the rest of the day. I had wanted to get some more stuff, and was luckily talked out of it, so we ended up actually going again a few weeks later (prior to this review being published).
On our second visit we started off with some chicken wings ($15), which were quite unexciting, flavoured essentially with salt and not much else, lacking completely in complex spices and flavours apart from the side of dipping sauce and pickled vegetables. It didn’t feel like a restaurant dish, and I didn’t feel like they were any better than what I could do with my air fryer at home.
The bun bo hue ($19) was contrastingly pretty good – a large bowl, with a huge quantity of different meats inside and a nice tangy-spicy taste. It wasn’t the best I’ve had in Sydney, but definitely one of the better in recent times, and probably better than Pho Vien’s down the street.
This beef brisket with bread roll ($19?) was really thick and rich, probably too rich for me to eat having already had my half of the BBH. Neither of us were able to finish it, and we had to take it home, where it was diluted by takeaway frozen broth from Pho Vien and subsequently consumed. That said, the bread was very nice and does mean that their banh mi has potential to be quite good as well. An adventure for next time.
ADVENTURE, NEXT TIME
I returned by myself for some banh mi, thinking that I would get two and eat half of each.
The crispy skin pork roll ($10) was pretty good. I enjoyed the crispy crackling pork, and the flavour of the roll overall, though felt that it was overall a bit light in terms of filling quantity, particularly that of the meat. Something that I did enjoy was that the bread went briefly into a toaster oven before serving, making it nice and warm and crispy.
The feeling of lightness was particularly amplified when it came to the cold cut pork roll ($7), which was so minimal and unsubstantial that there’s no way I could recommend it given the other local options available.
Jacob’s Vietnamese Place 27 Hercules St, Ashfield NSW 2131
We’ve eaten at Pho Vien, sister restaurant of Madam Ky (RIP), a couple of times in the last few weeks. Here are my thoughts.
The Pho Dat Biet – special beef pho($19.90) was pretty good, a large bowl with a flavourful soup and a generous helping of rare beef, beef brisket, and beef balls. Missing, unfortunately, was any hint of slightly less widely palatable yet still important inclusions such as tripe and tendon, which would’ve elevated this good bowl to the level of an excellent bowl. The first time I had this at Pho Vien I found that, unlike the time we ate at Madam Ky, the soup was adequately hot to handle the inclusion of mass bean sprouts. The second time we ate here my partner’s dad asked for cooked bean sprouts on the side, which to be honest was revolutionary. They came only slightly cooked, raw enough to remain crispy, but warm enough to not thermodilute the soup. What a next level move.
The Com Suon – tomato rice with grilled pork chop ($19.90) is really more my partner’s thing. It was not bad, just generally not what I’d pick overall. The quality of the tomato rice was good, however. Not too dry.
The Canh Ga Chien – deep fried wing ($7.50) came after a long wait and were very salty. Added to that – though the menu said wings, we got four drumsticks. Respecting that many would prefer drumsticks over mid wings due to their greater meatiness, I am not one of these people. I did not enjoy this.
The Bun Bo Hue ($19.50) that we had on our second visit was tasty and inoffensive, again lacking components like pork trotter and blood jelly that usually round out the dish. My partner, normally someone who doesn’t like bun bo hue, enjoyed this bowl, probably for the same reason that I found it lacking.
The Banh Xeo – pancake pork and prawn ($22.50) was crispy and tasty, well filled on the inside. I didn’t find any bugs in my vegetables, which doesn’t seem like a high bar, but seriously considering the last few banh xeos I have at different restaurants in Sydney, this counts as a plus.
Overall we had a couple of pretty good meals at Pho Vien, but I do wish they would add some of the more controversial ingredients to their soups (or at least the option to have them).
Pho Vien 283 Liverpool Rd, Ashfield NSW 2131 (02) 8057 8668
I found these photos on my computer from a year and a half ago, and realised I had never written anything about these porks roll. Searching through my Whatsapp chat with my girlfriend where sometimes feelings about banhs mi go, there was nothing noted, suggesting that these were neither memorably good nor memorably bad.
It doesn’t seem particularly fair, therefore, to even put up a post about Happy Snack Cafe, except for a fact that it acts as a reminder to myself that I’ve been here and that I don’t have to ever go back, unless it is to try some of their sit down options.
A completely unrelated flashback from the past is that it looks like we picked up these porks roll as we were actively worried about the possible impending death of our cat Evie. She had started wobbling all over the place, falling over, and had stopped eating. We had taken her to a couple of different vets who had given her IV fluids and each time she seemed to get better, but got worse again post-discharge.
Eventually we took her to the Small Animal Specialist Hospital (SASH) at North Ryde, where for the cost of $8,000 or so they put her in the MRI scanner under GA, took a CSF sample (from just under the occiput in cats!), and a bunch of other specialised tests. Seen by neurology, ophthalmology, dermatology, general surgery, and internal medicine, the presumptive diagnosis was thiamine deficiency based on increased signal intensity of bilateral basal nuclei. Some thiamine supplementation, and she didn’t have to die, and she’s been fine ever since.
These pork rolls were picked up on our way to pick up Evie from SASH. Here she is, in the car, with her neck all shaved for vascular access. I love her.
I honestly don’t remember enough about the porks roll to recommend Happy Snack Cafe House, but I remember a lot about SASH and can definitely recommend them to a friend or colleague.
Happy Snack Cafe House 104 The Crescent, Homebush West NSW 2140
